The Wall Street Journal - 28.10.2019

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Monday, October 28, 2019 |R3

And that brings us to the employees, who are
often the only answer to the bosses-who-won’t-
stop-interfering puzzle. It isn’t always easy. But
one or more of the following strategies can help
employees prod an overbearing boss to get out
of the way.

Honesty.
Good bosses crave constructive feedback. Espe-
cially those who aren’t thin-skinned or mas-
sively overconfident, and instead take pride in
making it safe for people to speak up. One male
CEO I worked with was embarrassed when two
female executive vice presidents gave him their
tallies of his interruptions during an executive
team meeting. He interrupted each woman at
least six times, but never interrupted their four
male peers. The CEO vowed to change his ways
and asked them to keep tracking his interrup-
tions to ensure he kept his word.

Token obedience.
The CEO of a Silicon Valley software firm was
besieged by a pompous and pushy board mem-
ber who insisted on an ever-expanding list of
changes that the CEO thought were terrible.
The CEO ignored most of the board member’s
ideas. Now and then, however, he implemented
one of the better (and less intrusive) demands
to placate him. Sometimes, if a boss can point
to a couple of things that he or she initiated,
that is enough.

Foot dragging.
This is a classic strategy for fending off power-
ful people who make unreasonable demands and
won’t back down. My Stanford colleague Prof.
Pfeffer and I once interviewed the manager of
one of the most profitable branches of a huge
bank. The manager said he was successful, in
part, because he resisted and delayed participat-
ing in the many corporate programs that rained
down from on high. When pressed to join a new
program, his go-to answer was that people in his
branch were too busy right now. But they might
have time in four or five months. Foot dragging
worked well in his company because senior ex-
ecutives had short attention spans—after the
first blush of excitement faded, most corporate
programs faded or disappeared in a few months.

Constructive

defiance.

Brave underlings may simply refuse to comply
with misguided demands from superiors. This
strategy requires precautions, as insecure and
vindictive bosses are prone to punish insubordi-
nate underlings. But when employees believe
they are right and don’t fear their boss (or just
don’t care), defiance can be best for all con-
cerned. In “The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I
Built Our Company,” HP co-founder David Pack-
ard bragged about an engineer named Chuck
House who defied Packard’s direct order to stop
work on a display monitor.
Mr. Packard wrote, “Instead he embarked on a
vacation to California—stopping along the way to
show potential customers a prototype of the mon-
itor.” Customers loved the display, and so House
“persuaded his R&D manager to rush the monitor
into production, and as it turned out, HP sold
more than 17,000 display monitors representing
sales revenue of $35 million for the company.” Mr.
Packard added, “Some years later, at a gathering
of HP engineers, I presented Chuck with a medal
for ‘extraordinary contempt and defiance beyond
the normal call of engineering duty.’ ”
Chuck House was lucky to have a boss who
realized, as Mr. Packard says in the book, “I re-
ally just wanted a success for HP.” It’s tricky to
use him as a role model, but I can assure you
that there are other bosses out there who won’t
retaliate when employees have good reason to
ignore their commands.

Malicious

compliance.

This sneaky strategy entails doing exactly what
an incompetent and demanding superior wants.
The resulting failure is then used to humiliate,
and perhaps bring down, the clueless boss. As I
reported in “Good Boss, Bad Boss,” a manager at
a technology firm wrote me about an ugly and
cumbersome prototype his team built—which
the CEO savaged. The manager “explained (and
documented) that his team had done exactly as
the V.P. of Engineering ordered, and although he
voiced early and adamant objections to the V.P.,
he gave up because “it was like talking to a
brick wall.” The subsequent malicious compli-
ance cost that vice president his job because
“we just said ‘Yes, sir,’ and followed his lousy
orders precisely.”
These strategies vary widely, but the motiva-
tions of the employees who have used them are
similar. They elected to resist, ignore and under-
mine their bosses’ authority because they wanted
to do what was best for their organizations, col-
leagues, and customers. Not out of a desire to sab-
otage their organizations or engage in mean-spir-
ited revenge. But because they understood what
too many bosses don’t: For employees to do their
best work, the best bosses know when less man-
agement is better management.

Dr. Suttonis a professor in the department
of management science and engineering at
Stanford University and co-author of “Scaling
Up Excellence.” He can be reached at
[email protected].

If you’ve provided hands-on support

and troubleshooting for all kinds of

workplace dilemmas, you’ll need to

withdraw that support gradually so

that your colleague can learn to be

independent. Instead of reviewing an

entire PowerPoint presentation, ask

to see only the three or four slides

of most concern or importance; next

time, scale that back to one or two,

and so on.

Don’t fire

difficult employees.

Work with them.

When someone who reports directly

to you simply refuses to accept your

authority, what do you do? Well, you

can always fire them—an option

that’s not available when you’re

dealing with your children. That’s

exactly what makes parenting advice

so helpful when it comes to manag-

ing a difficult employee: By taking

the firing option off the table, it

forces you to find a way to reconcile

your differences so you can get the

work and results you need from even

the most resistant employee.

I found that solution in “The Ex-

plosive Child” by psychologist Ross

Greene. Dr. Greene observes that

when you’re dealing with a child

who refuses to accept parental au-

thority, you can’t rely on the conven-

tional parenting strategy he calls

Plan A: Do what I tell you. Instead,

you need to get good at Plan B: using

collaborative problem-solving to

identify unresolved issues and

jointly develop a strategy for tack-

ling your area of disagreement.

Much of Dr. Greene’s road map for

Plan B conversations translates di-

rectly to the world of work. I partic-

ularly love his formula for opening

any Plan B conversation, which at

work would go something like, “I’ve

noticed that you’ve been taking re-

ally long lunches/you’ve missed a

few deadlines/you’re not participat-

ing during our team meetings lately.

What’s up with that?” By clearly lay-

ing out the problem and asking for

input, you set the stage for a candid

conversation that can help you find

a way to get your wayward employee

back on track.

Identify hidden

workplace stressors.

To be an effective manager, you need

to manage your own stress; other-

wise it’s easy to overreact or under-

perform.

In the book “Self-Reg,” Stuart

Shanker describes how, in the case

of children with behavioral or aca-

demic challenges, he identifies

sources or symptoms of stress that

are easy to miss. A child who misbe-

haves in class may be experiencing a

biological stressor like fluorescent

lighting or itchy clothing tags; a

child who has tantrums at parties

may be responding to the social

stressor of interacting with a large

number of new people. Learning to

scan for and recognize different

types of stress provides a powerful

tool for helping children achieve a

state of calm, alert engagement—the

very state that makes us most pro-

ductive at work, too.

You can learn to recognize and

manage your own hidden stressors

by noticing the small things that col-

lectively wear down your energy and

reduce your effectiveness. For exam-

ple, once I saw how much I was able

to reduce my child’s stress by buying

tagless pants and seamless socks, I

noticed how often I get distracted or

irritable during my workday because

I’m wearing a constricting jacket or

sitting in an uncomfortable chair.

Choosing different clothes and get-

ting picky about where I sit down to

work free up my energy and concen-

tration so I’m more productive.

It takes a bit of detective to work

to uncover the stressors we take for

granted, but a simple habit of self-

scanning can help. Take note of the

moments when you find yourself

hunching your shoulders or furrow-

ing your brow, and notice what’s

triggered that reaction: Is it a cer-

tain kind of social interaction? The

fluorescent lights in your office

meeting room? A particular kind of

work task that provokes anxiety?

The more precise you are in pin-

pointing the emotional, cognitive or

physical factors that throw you off

your game, the better you can adjust

your work environment and activi-

ties to bring out your best—or at

least anticipate and manage your re-

actions.

Dr. Samuelis a technology

researcher and the author of

“Work Smarter With Social

Media.” She can be reached at

[email protected].

BYALEXANDRASAMUEL

W

hile business books

often focus on how to

improve your per-

sonal performance,

leadership is ulti-

mately about how

you foster and nur-

ture your team. To

get really good at

that nurturing work,

go to the books that are all about nurturing: the

current generation of parenting books, informed by

the latest research on developmental psychology

and neuroscience.

Here are some of the key lessons I’ve taken

from my favorite parenting books, and how

they’ve helped at the office.

Before business,

make the connection.

Companies organize team-building retreats and of-

fice parties because we all know that it’s easier to

work effectively as a team when you have strong

relationships of trust and connection. But it

shouldn’t take a special occasion to build connec-

tions at work—any more than you wait for a spe-

cial occasion to connect with your children.

In “Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to

Matter More than Peers,” Gordon Neufeld and Ga-

bor Maté map out an approach to building deeper

connections with your children. Their advice to

parents includes a simple but powerful practice,

which they call “collecting” your children.

This simply means that before you address the

business at hand at various times of the day, you

take a bit of time to re-establish your connection

and relationship with your children. Before you

ask them to get dressed for school, for instance, or

greet them after school with questions about their

homework, greet them warmly, sit with them for

a brief chat or simply catch their eye and smile.

We can apply this insight to the workplace, too.

Consider re-establishing connections the essential

first step in any collaborative work, whether it’s a

group meeting, a one-on-one conversation in person

or a conference call. Start with some brief conversa-

tion unrelated to the business at hand, make eye

contact and/or smile, and then get down to work.

The time you spend building this into the start

of every interaction will be repaid—and then

some—by speeding your path toward effective col-

laboration and avoiding the pitfalls of misunder-

standing and mistrust.

You are not your colleague.

When you’re a manager, your team’s success or fail-

ure isyoursuccess or failure. But that doesn’t mean

HOW

PARENTING

BOOKS

TAUGHT ME

TO BE A

BETTER

LEADER

you should identify with your team—

that is, you shouldn’t assume that you

all share the same mind-set and feel-

ings. Indeed, if you read Shefali

Tsabary’s “The Conscious Parent,”

you may recognize that keeping a lit-

tle psychological and emotional dis-

tance between yourself and the team

you manage can help you avoid knee-

jerk reactions and take a lot of the

tension out of the workplace.

Dr. Tsabary’s book focuses on the

work parents need to do to stop iden-

tifying with their children—and in

particular, with their children’s strug-

gles or behavioral challenges. By no-

ticing the ways their own emotional

issues can get triggered by their chil-

dren, parents can learn to better rec-

ognize their own needs and tempera-

ment, differentiate them from those

of each of their children, and under-

stand how they all interact. That can

allow parents to respond to difficult

situations in more positive and pro-

ductive ways, instead of simply snap-

ping at their children.

Just think about what you could

learn by applying this approach to a

common workplace problem, like

what to do when a subordinate pre-

pares a presentation that doesn’t

meet your expectations. You could

reply, out of blind disappointment,

with a tersely worded list of required

changes—or you could reflect on how

that employee reacts to your man-

agement style and perhaps work to

make your expectations clearer and

your feedback more constructive.

Wean an

overdependent

colleague.

At first, it might be delightful to

have a colleague who values your

guidance and defers to your experi-

ence and expertise. But a few months

(or years!) into troubleshooting ev-

ery business problem, you’re ready

to do less hand-holding and get some

time back for your own work. So how

can you help colleagues or employees

stand on their own two feet without

cutting them off in a way that might

be traumatic?

The answer might come from

Elizabeth Pantley, the author of “The

No-Cry Sleep Solution.” I credit Ms.

Pantley with helping me get my own

toddler to sleep through the night,

thanks to her methodology for

soothing babies who won’t fall

asleep unless they’re nursing or be-

ing held. The solution is to let babies

nurse or cuddle until they are almost

asleep, and then put them down;

over time, by gradually putting them

to bed with less and less nursing or

cuddling, they learn to put them-

selves to sleep.

You can think of that dependent

colleague as an analogous problem:

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